Let’s Start At the Very Beginning

So… this is my blog and it will be mostly about cakes and pastries. I thought I would start right at what I think is the easiest and post my recipe for a plain sponge or Victoria sponge, because this is a brilliant cake to be able to make and is always a winner.

 I use  this recipe for cakes and cup cakes. And just so you know I use ounces (because my mother is old fashioned) but will try to convert my recipes to grams. 

People always ask me my techniques for making a good sponge. Do I weigh my eggs? How do I make it rise? Why does it sink? etc. I hope I can answer all these questions. 

Ingredients:

6oz/ 170g Caster sugar 

6oz/ 170g Butter 

1 tea spoon (tsp) vanilla extract

3 Eggs 

6oz/170g Self raising flour

1 tea spoon (tsp) baking powder

Recipe:

• First thing you do is CREAM the butter and sugar. Creaming is mixing the two ingredients together until they are a pale colour, light and fluffy, you cream the butter and sugar to get small air bubbles trapped between the fat, this helps the cake rise and is one of the most important mixing methods. 
• Next add the vanilla and incorporate it in to the mixture.
• Weigh the flour and add the baking powder to it, make sure you mix the baking powder in the flour because you don’t want big lumps of baking powder in your batter or large air bubble in the batter.
•  Now add one egg then a table spoon (tbsp) of the flour mix, and continue until you have used up the three eggs. 
• The last thing is to fold the remaining flour mix in to the batter until it’s just fully mixed in. This is also to help the cake rise.
• Now my final tip is bake the cake at 180 degrees for approx. 20 minutes. When the cake is cooked you will know this by pressing your finger on the top and if it springs back up then it’s cooked. 

well I hope this helps explain few things and gets you baking. more to come very soon.